Urban Legends

Pork + Coke = Worms

The Legend

Submitted via e-mail March 2005

Everyone tells me that if you take uncooked pork and pour soda on it that worms will come out. It's not just a few people telling me this. Not just some people telling me this. But everybody telling me this. So is it true or what?

variant

Did you know that pork is full of tapeworms? You can check by putting the raw pork in the middle of the kitchen floor and pouring a whole bottle of Coke on it. Because tapeworms hate Coke (it rots their teeth) they flee all over your kitchen. This won't work with cooked pork and it won't work with a live pig. Also, it's best to do this when your mom isn't home.

variant

It turns out that diet Coke can be used as a test for impurities. If you put Coke on raw pork it will reject it because raw pork isn't good for you. If you don't have any pork, try testing Mentos. Drop a Mento into a bottle of diet Coke and the Coke will try and flee the bottle because Mentos have tape worms in the middle. It's true because it's science!

Behind the Legend

Pouring soda on pork to get the worms to flee is a silly pastime. Anyone with even basic training in biology can tell you that there is nothing at all harmful about the worms in pork just so long as you cook the heck out of them before eating.

Although the "soda + pork = worms" item gets a lot of press, there are many similar tests you can perform. For example:

You can check if a wedding cake is going bad by pouring motor oil on it.

Dunking a doughnut in coffee creates a coffee-flavored doughnut and brings out java's natural sweetness.

Pouring Mountain Dew on your cat will make it go insane.

Spraying a smoker with lighter fluid is a traditional (but felonious and occasionally fatal) cure for smoking.

Filling a plastic bottle with filtered water can increase the value of the water by a factor of 1,000.